THE Real Inspector Hound opened in 1968 at The Criterion Theatre and the plot concerns two competing theatre critics, Moon and Birdboot, who are in a theatre in order to review a murder mystery.

The play they have come to review is a send up of the country house murders popularized by Agatha Christie. Both find themselves participating in the plot of the on-stage thiller, playing roles which result in the solving of the on-stage murder with unexpected results to them.

Richard MacCabe makes a delightful character of Moon, the third string critic who seems more concerned as to his position than the play they are watching.

As the superior critic, Birdboot, Nicholas Le Prevost suavely asserts his superiority putting Moon down verbally at every opportunity. He, too, is more concerned with his personal life and position than the play so when he gets drawn into the plot on stage it is no surprise that he fits in with the shallow fictional characters.

Of the fictional characters on stage, Una Stubbs excels as the maid with an answer for everything, including expositions of the plot, but it is left to co-director Sean Foley as the archetypal Major to wind the plot up making it clear that the author, Tom Stoppard, owed more than a passing nod to Mrs Christie in his pastiche of the The Mousetrap.

This satire on critics, their methods and flawed integrity makes a good curtain-raiser to another attack on theatrical foibles, only this time the mannered, artificial theatre of the 18th Century parodied with style and wit by Richard Sheridan in The Critic (pictured).

The Critic concerns the production of a play about the Armada written by an erstwhile critic, Mr Puff (Richard MacCabe). It opens in the home of Mr Dangle (Nicholas Le Prevost), whose wife, Una Stubbs, is fed up with his refusal to take real life seriously as opposed to his passion for matters theatrical.

He is visited by a putative playwright, Sir Fretful Plagiary (a highly humorous performance by Sean Foley), and asked to criticize two plays in manuscript.

They are interrupted by Mr Puff, who wants Dangle and his friend Sneer (Derek Griffiths) to attend a rehearsal of his play and the rest of the evening is taken up by the farcical happenings at the performance.

Richard McCabe gives a faultless, brilliant performance as Puff, his lengthy speech to Dangle on the theatre and matters connected to it was beautifully timed, turning what could have become a boring discourse a witty dissertation.

His despair at the performances of the actors and his distress at the massacre of his play, both dramatically and physically (the players had discarded all the parts they did not like), was a sight to behold even while one laughed at him for it.

This was a supreme comedy performance which, whilst it bordered at times on farce, never went too far and was beautifully sustained throughout the evening.

The rest of the cast provided an adequate setting for his superlative performances giving, for the most part, excellent performances themselves often in several different roles in the play within the play.

Nicholas Le Prevost made Dangle a likeable if somewhat un-humourous figure, which set off well the ebullience of Mr McCabe’s Puff.

Una Stubbs made a splendid cameo of the sensible Mrs. Dangle and a more farcial one as the Confidante to Hermione Gulliford’s wonderfully histrionic Tilburina, suffering in white linen as opposed to her mistress’ white satin.

The directors, Jonathan Church and Sean Foley (who also tastefully revealed a portion of his nether anatomy as Britannia in the cod Masque which ended the evening), kept their cast successfully in the confines of restrained farce without letting them go too far, making the evening that much funnier and, in a strange way, more believable.

While it is easy to establish the common theme between the two plays, the venality and imperfections of critics and the absurdity of what often appears on stage, one can only admire the professionalism and wit that has gone into the production and presentation.

While the moral at the end of the evening has been well and truly made, reaching it has been a pleasurable experience as each play stands on its own, both from the aspect of enjoyment and from the excellence of the respective casts; it is the combination which is devastating.

As a critic, one is left feeling somewhat trapped in case inadvertently one commits the solecisms so brilliantly sent up in the performance. I shall simply point out that this is a worthy evening and one that deserves to be seen farther afield than simply Sussex and scuttle off quietly into the night before the brickbats start falling round my ears!

The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard.
Directed by Jonathan Church & Sean Foley

The Critic by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Directed by Jonathan Church & Sean Foley

Designer – Ruari Murchison
Lighting – Tim Mitchell
Sound – Jonathan Suffolk
Composer – Matthew Scott

CAST: Nicholas Le Prevost; Sophie Bould; Joe Dixon; Mark Field; Sean Foley; Derek Griffiths; Hermione Gulliford; Richard Kane; Richard McCabe; Javier Marzan; Sam Parks; Philippa Stanton; Michael Stevenson; Una Stubbs.

Minerva Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6AP.
July 2 – August 28, 2010.
Evenings: 7.30pm/Mat. Weds or Thurs. & Sat: 2pm
Box Office: 01234 781312

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